


sarpedon

by EtherealPrince



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Greece, Angst, Character Death, First Meetings, Gorgons (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, and also last meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29664738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherealPrince/pseuds/EtherealPrince
Summary: a scholar from ancient greece is shipwrecked and seeks shelter in a gorgon's lair. there is more to the stories he's been told than he knows.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	sarpedon

The man from Athens crossed the Ionian Sea, and the winds pushed him toward an island on an outcropping of the nation of Libya.

Fatigued, exhausted, and alone on his ship, the man staggered to shore upon the black gravel and watched the waves lap at his sandaled feet. An academic such as he was not fit for being shipwrecked.

The rocky cliffs were steep and cold. He climbed them.

There he found a deep and cavernous opening. ΚΡΑΤΩ ΕΞΩ, a carving in its wall said, etched deep into the stone. ΑΔΕΙΑ.

Lacking shelter, the scholar from Athens had no other options but to enter anyway.

He traced the carvings on the inside of the torch lit cave with blue eyes. The gods in battle with each other, embittered by humanity’s ignorance and splendorous in their glory. Poseidon upon his chariot, pulled by hippocampus.

Terrifying beasts with snakes for hair and leathery wings not unlike those of a sea serpent.

He stopped in his steps, watched flickering firelight travel down into the deepest recesses of the cave. A look back, and the cloudy blue outside was growing farther and farther away by the second. 

Newly fearing who or what might wait for him inside, the man continued down his tunnel, and no longer stopped to look at what was drawn on the walls. He was drawn to the center of the cave system like a moth to candlelight, like Icarus to Helios. His steps echoed.

The first body that met him in the darkness was made of stone.

The statue was a diplomat, dressed in long robes that marked him as nobility. On his face he bore an expression of utmost terror; his arms were stretched out in front of his body as if he were warding off an attack.

The scholar stared into his eyes of marble, hoping that he had not stumbled onto this island after his travels just to die.

As he peered farther down into the tunnel, he saw other silhouettes - unmoving silhouettes - and realized that his hopes might as well be dashed.

What started as one statue of a former living person turned into three, which turned into five, until it was hard to find spaces in-between the dead to maneuver around. Yet, still, he kept traveling further. Something strange had possessed him, and he needed to know what lay at the center of the island, at the end of the cave, whether it be something horrible or beautiful.

He recalled tales from the mainland - of a brother and sister, raped by the mighty god Poseidon and banished from Greece by Athena. Turned into gorgons, with serpents winding around their heads and ugly faces that could never be loved by another. Both were young, unwed, and society had shunned them. The sister, for adultery, the brother, for intercourse with another man. 

He had always believed the stories to be cruel. What was humanity’s purpose as chosen by the gods, if this is how they were treated by them? To be given reason, the propensity for rational thought, the greatest gift of all - but then to be used by the gods in any carnal way they saw fit?

Sometimes the scholar cursed the gods, and sometimes he blessed them. Now, as he meandered further down the cave’s tunnel system by the dim light of fire, was one of the times he cursed.

Was it a punishment for him, to be washed up on a gorgon’s island? Or was he stupid for entering its territory? Could be either, both, neither - and yet he kept walking.

The statues of dead men cast frightening shadows on the walls, curved and stooping like monsters. The scholar stepped over the decapitated stone head of one of them to get through a particularly thick crowd of soldier statues, and suddenly he was in open space again.

He looked back - the crowd of statues stared at him as if pleading, to keep him from traveling any further into the cave, now that he was past their gallery of death and terror.

A sound came from further down still, like footsteps over gravel, and he continued on.

For a moment, he entertained the thought of another man stranded, someone human like himself, who had gotten lost in the caves and who he could escape with. The thought quickly faded - it didn’t take much for a gorgon to kill you.

The scholar wasn’t stupid enough to call out to whoever was in the cave, but after a minute they seemed to notice him anyway. As he came upon a - chamber, of sorts, occupied by simple furniture and decorated like the Spartan barracks of the south, a voice emanated out from the darkness.

“You shouldn’t have come here, son of man.”

He halted in his steps. The voice was low, hissing, dangerous. He could see no one but felt eyes on him all the same.

A beat passed for him to find his voice, timid as it was: “I was shipwrecked, sir. I only seek shelter.”

He could swear he almost heard the disembodied voice scoff at him. “You should have stayed in your boat.”

“The tide was coming in - I would have froze to death.”

“Perhaps that would be better.” The voice surussed, circling him in the darkness while avoiding the firelight seemingly effortlessly.

The scholar turned around slowly, following the voice. The echo of water dripping in the cave seemed impossibly loud.

“Who are you?”

In answer, a tall, dark silhouette emerged from the darkness in the back of the chamber. The scholar shut his eyes and turned his head away, for fear of a similar fate to the poor men who came before him.

He heard someone laugh, bitterly. “I suspect you already know.”

As long as he didn’t open his eyes, he would be safe. As long as he didn’t make eye contact with the gorgon, he would live to see another day. Hands curled into fists at his sides, sweating, as the creature moved closer.

“Why have you entered so far into my home?” The monster said, approaching him slowly, almost warily. “You have seen those whom I have killed.”

“I know not why, sir. Something captivating. Something magnetic. I was drawn in by something unknown.”

The monster’s voice sounded amused. “You are braver than the rest of them, to approach me willfully. Tell me, son of man…”

A cold hand lands on the center of his back, and he stiffens. As if he were in a spell, he followed the monster as he began to lead him deeper still into the cave, and opened his eyes but only stared at the ground beneath his feet to guide him.

“...Do you have a name?”

“Why do you ask me?” The scholar said, watching his steps and the steps of the man beside him. He as well had human-colored skin, dark hair trailing up his legs. The scholar had expected scales.

“So that when you die I may have something to remember.”

A chill runs down his spine. Was he really to die in this place? The monster couldn’t expect him to keep his eyes averted forever - the fatal human flaw of curiosity was strong. Perhaps he _was_ lost forever.

Because of that, he felt no shame in revealing his name to the gorgon. “Chares,” He said, and his voice drifted down the tunnel like an echo. He swallowed - “And I think I deserve your name in return, if I am to die here.”

The hand on his back slipped higher, and grasped his shoulder. Chares and the monster stopped in front of a large, oak-carven door, set in a jagged frame of stone. He didn’t dare look up to see more.

In his peripheral vision, a hand reached up and pushed open the door. “My name is Erich, and no man leaves this place.”

Behind the door, once Chares lifted his head up enough to get a good look, laid an enormous cavern. The stalactites hung hundreds of feet above him, and an eerie green glow lit up the entire space from somewhere in the distance. He squinted, keeping his eyes firmly away from Erich, the gorgon, and looked further - there was a straight path to the back of the cavern through a rocky field that ended at a large mirror, tall as two men and just as wide. It was the only man made structure in the entire hollow.

“Come.” Erich said, and guided him forward again, down the path.

The two of them walked slowly. Chares dropped his head again, looking resolutely anywhere but the Gorgon, and instead at the rocky field on both of his sides.

He looked, and looked, and realized they weren't just rocks at all.

With a gasp, Chares instinctively pulled himself closer to Erich’s side. On each side of the path, monstrous amalgamations of human statues reached out with gnarled limbs and horrified faces, as if to grab his legs and pull him into their thrall. Disembodied limbs scattered the ground in the gaps between bodies, crumbling into dust, killed by a beast who looked too human.

 _The stories, remember the stories,_ Chares thought. The tales that painted the Gorgons as innocent humans, abused by the gods and punished by them. He hoped to the heavens that the tales were true and that there was some sense to all this death, not just mindless killing.

Erich grasped his bicep and led him on.

“You’re a murderer.” Chares whispered, staring in shock at each frozen face that passed him by.

He heard a stiff intake of breath. “It was your kind who made me this way.” Erich hissed, but Chares didn’t hear anger in it - instead, there was a profound sadness in his tone.

They stopped in front of the mirror.

Chares kept his head down, looked at the reflection of his feet in the glass, wondered if his sister back in Athens would send anyone to look for him.

“The demigod Perseus killed Medusa by looking at her in the reflection of his shield.” Erich stated, letting Chares’ arm go. “It is only by eye contact that I end a life.”

Chares saw Erich’s arm lift up and gesture toward the mirror. “I will grant you this one mercy: a chance to look upon the face of your death without any harm.”

It was such a subtle display of power and pain, both in Erich’s words and in his movements - he was cursed to never do something as simple as look another human in the eyes ever again, and knew at the same time that humans by nature were social creatures. Chares _would_ look at him, at some point, and instead of that being his last moments of life Erich had decided to give him one chance to see him for who he truly was, whether he was creature or human or not.

It _was_ a mercy. Chares did not expect to die today, but he faced its impending arrival with more bravery than he had historically believed himself to have.

He lifted his head up.

Erich was quite possibly the most gorgeous person he had ever laid eyes upon.

He was lean, broad-shouldered, with an angular face and dark auburn hair. A short beard covered his chin and outlined sharp cheekbones, thin scars. His eyes, set deep into his skull, shone an unnatural blue-grey-green in the light, betraying every one of his many years on earth. Erich looked like the image of the gods, like a sculpture, but misery and loneliness poured out from him like a torrent. He seemed to be regretful as he watched Chares’ eyes rake up and down his body.

“Why, you are just a man.” Chares told him, meeting his eyes through the mirror’s reflection. “The stories spoke of a terrible serpentine beast.”

The corners of Erich’s lips pulled up in a bitter smile. “And your fellow men will believe it still, once you are dead.”

Chares’ expression crumpled. He wanted so badly to turn around and touch Erich, to caress him, to give him the affectionate human contact he must have been aching for ever since he was banished. But he was not ready to die just yet.

“Why take mercy on me, of all folk who have washed up on your island?” He asked the Gorgon, fearing the answer.

Erich looked pensive - sorrowful. “Because you are brave, and because you are beautiful.”

Despite it all, Chares found himself smiling. He barely cared about his own reflection - he had seen his own face enough - Erich was all he could focus on. If he was to die looking into his eyes, it would not be a painful way to go. 

“The gods wronged you,” He murmured. “And I am sorry they did.”

Erich looked away.

Chares continued: “I will not die fearing you, Erich. Know this and let it bring you peace.”

“I never wanted to be a murderer.” Erich whispered. “Athena has made me this way. It is I who should be sorry.”

“None of it was your choice.” Chares said, and shifted on his feet as if to turn around. He felt that it was time. He saw Erich stiffen up, look back at him with those color-shifting eyes. “If I must die, I am content to do so while gazing at you. You enchant me.”

Erich was near silent in his next words. “It is a curse to love a monster such as I.”

Turning silently on his heel, Chares faced Erich and trailed his eyes slowly up his legs, his lean torso, long arms, wide shoulders. “Then may I be damned by the gods, for I do love you.”

Staring into Erich’s eyes was like falling into an abyss. They swallowed him in, grabbed him, froze him, hypnotized him. It was in one moment horrifying and in another the most wondrous thing he had ever seen. Outside of the gaze in which he was locked, Charles thinks that Erich looks remorseful, but everything outside of his stare quickly ceased to exist. 

As stone crept up his limbs and body and stiffened him into a statue of marble, forever standing with one hand slightly outstretched, Chares was aware enough for one final moment to see a tear drop from Erich’s eye.

The last thing he heard before everything went dark was the tear shattering as it hit the ground, frozen into stone.

**Author's Note:**

> Sarpedon: an island off the coast of Libya that Medusa was said to live on.
> 
> ΚΡΑΤΩ ΕΞΩ: KEEP OUT  
> ΑΔΕΙΑ: LEAVE
> 
> about the names: charles and erik have ancient greek-equivalent names instead of their regular ones because i thought that'd seem out of place. hence, chares and erich.
> 
> this is a oneshot i decided to write last night out of nowhere. i love an ancient greece/rome au and i love angst, so that's how this was born! please leave a comment to tell me what you think - kudos are nice but comments keep me writing! thank you for reading :]


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